


Snow Falls On Desert Sky

by HalfASlug



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24080530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalfASlug/pseuds/HalfASlug
Summary: Kim Wexler and the long road home.
Relationships: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman/Kim Wexler
Comments: 23
Kudos: 83





	Snow Falls On Desert Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Demolition Lovers by MCR. Legalese lifted lovingly from wikipedia.

Thursday evenings, Kim sat by the phone, waiting.

Sometimes it would ring dead on six. Other times, she would wait hours, long after her mom had gone to bed, taking the stale smell of smoke with her. The worst weeks were when she would wake up in the middle of the night, still at the kitchen table. She’d drag herself to bed, massaging the crink in her neck and a hollow feeling in her chest.

This was one of the weeks she was caught up in her homework when it eventually rang. She dropped her pencil in her haste to pick up.

“Hello?”

“An inmate from Nebraska State Penitentiary is placing a call to this number. Press one if you-”

Kim had placed her finger on the one the moment the message started.

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Hey, sweetheart.”

“What was it this week?”

She heard him chuckle and closed her eyes to pretend he was there with her. Of course, she couldn’t remember ever seeing him in her kitchen. Or anywhere other than the visitor’s centre when her mom saved up enough gas money for the drive.

“Don’t I even get to ask how school is going?”

“It’s going fine. I’m doing my math homework right now,” Kim replied quickly. “So what movie-”

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy?”

“Um…  _ Dirty Dozen _ ?”

Her dad sighed. “I know you know this one.”

Kim drummed her fingers on the table and bit her lip. “ _Where Eagles Dare!_ ”

“That’s my girl! It had been a while. I nearly forgot how it ended.”

As he spoke, Kim noted the movie title in the corner of her notebook. At the weekend she helped at the video rental store near her school. She wasn’t old enough to be a proper employee but for a couple of hours she could tidy the store and organise the stockroom. The owner was an old drinking buddy of her dad’s and her mom agreed to the deal because she saw it as free child care. Providing she kept her promise to not go into the curtained off area, she could watch a movie of her choice afterwards. 

Kim always picked the movie her dad had watched at the latest movie night so she ended up watching the same ten on rotation. Whenever the prison acquired a new vhs it was hard to tell which Wexler was more excited. Last week, they hadn’t been allowed to watch anything for reasons her dad refused to explain so he would give her a list of recommendations instead.

“I watched _The Great Escape_ last Saturday,” she told him. 

“Can’t think why they won’t show us that one. What did you think?”

“It was no _Ice Station Zebra_.”

“Is anything?”

“Why would he reply in English?”

“Sloppy.”

“They were so close!”

“One small mistake can fuck a lot of stuff up.”

“Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence. Kim finished the problem she was working on. It was almost like being a normal kid for a second until the phone line crackled and broke the illusion. 

“I’m sorry I’m not-”

“Dad. Don’t.”

There were calls like these sometimes, where he wasn’t in a great place and would try to explain or apologise. In the past, he would just skip a week if he was particularly down, not wanting to infect her life with his misery, but Kim had insisted she didn’t care. Any call was better than no call.

She knew why he wasn’t around. She knew he hadn’t meant to kill that guy, that he _couldn't_ have known as he threw the punch it would cause they guy crack his head on the edge of the bar. She knew the only reason he’d been hit with a murder charge was because the victim had been a cop’s brother. She knew that it wasn’t fair and that no one could fix it and she wasn’t going to be able to properly see her dad like the other kids until she was at least in high school.

She knew-

“I love you, kid,” her dad whispered. 

She knew that was just another apology.

* * *

The snow on her hat was melting, dripping into the collar of her coat as she entered the bar. Kim shivered and pulled her gloves off as quickly as she could with numb fingers. It was less than two miles from the apartment but it had taken her nearly an hour to get there walking against the wind.

The sooner she got her driver’s license the better.

“And what can I get you tonight, young lady?” asked the bartender.

“Whiskey. On the rocks.”

“You got ID?”

Kim gave him a wry smile. “One of these days, you’ll forget to ask.”

“Not likely,” he chuckled. “She’s not been too bad tonight. Just figured to call time on it early with the weather and all-”

“Thanks, Ronnie.”

He nodded over to the table in the corner by the dart board and Kim braced herself. Ronnie hadn’t been wrong; he’d cut her mom off before she couldn’t stand up without help, but she was still wavering on the spot. The guys sat at the table she was next to looked as though they weren’t too pleased she was there.

Kim sighed as she dug the crumpled bills out of her coat pocket and handed them over to Ronnie. It was everything she had made after school at the Hinky Dinky that week but it was that or their rent money. It was worth a few skipped meals to keep a roof over their heads. 

Most of the barflies knew her and nodded at her as she stalked past them.

“Kimmy!” her mom cried when she spotted her. “Kimmy, this is-”

“Nice to meet you,” Kim said blandly to the two men her mom was with. “Get your coat.”

“But-”

“Coat.”

It took a few more minutes of arguing but eventually her mom’s stubbornness faded into petulance and that usually meant she was on the verge of leaving. Kim could feel the eyes of the drinkers on her but ignored them. She didn’t care if they wondered what a high school kid was doing in a bar or were interested in the argument. Pretending they weren’t there sped the whole process up.

“You never let me have any fun,” her mom mumbled as she struggled with her denim jacket. It would be soaked within seconds of stepping outside and Kim toyed with swapping it for her coat. She nixed the idea, remembering she had a big biology test in the morning and couldn’t risk being out sick for it.

Taking pity on her mom, she helped her get her arms into the sleeves. The clock on the wall told her she wasn’t getting more than five hours sleep before her alarm but she knew better than to think that would make her mom speed up. 

“You aren’t getting another drink in here tonight and there’s a sixer at home.”

Jacket finally in place, her mom turned around, beaming at her. “I love you, Kimmy.”

“Yep.” Kim bent down to retrieve her mom’s purse. “You told me that last time.”

“And I meant it!” She reached for the purse, but Kim slung in over her own shoulder. She’d learnt not to surrender the car keys if she wanted to keep the upper hand in the inevitable argument they’d have in the parking lot. “I gotta piss.”

If they ever got there.

Kim watched her mom totter over to the bathroom and checked the clock again. It was going to take them nearly twice as long to get home as it did for her to get there - and that was if her mom didn’t slip and twist her ankle.

“Don’t be too hard on her, kid.” 

Kim turned to see the man who had spoken. She had no idea what his name was but she had spoken to him a few times. The drink in his hand was as much a part of him as the armful of faded tattoos he sported but he never seemed drunk. 

“I try not to,” she replied honestly as he retrieved his darts from the board on a wall covered in baseball pennants. He handed them to her with a sigh.

“She hasn’t been the same since your pa-”

“I know.” Kim threw a dart, hitting double top. It had been six months since the worst phone call of her life. Some days she got all the way to third period without being reminded of it. On the weekends there was little to distract her.

She threw the second dart. Treble top.

“Nice,” commented the man and Kim gave him a small smile.

Raising the final dart, she breathed in deep, the smell of sweat and beer hitting the back of her throat. She thought about how molecules from her surroundings were filling her up, and were part of the air keeping her alive. How, even after she had left and was back out in the snow, part of the bar would still be with her. How she would carry it home, to bed, to school.

She swore she could feel her sneakers sticking to the floor.

Kim threw the final dart, hitting the wall a foot under the board.

“Tough luck, kid,” commiserated the man, patting her on the back. “Ronnie didn’t give you a beer, did he?”

Kim shook her head without looking away from the dart. She peeled her foot from the floor, relieved when it wasn’t stuck like she feared. Eyes locked onto the final dart, she made her way to the wall. It was a mess of colour, baseball team logos from all over the country splayed over it with no attempt at a system or pattern. Ronnie’s collection of pennants was a labour of love that had taken him decades to curate.

Hands inexplicably trembling, Kim pulled back the deep green and gold of an Athletics pennant to see the red one she had hit. A conquistador smiled up at her as she collected her dart.

“Albuquerque Dukes,” she read aloud.

“Kimmy! C’mon, you wanted to go so let’s go!”

Her mom’s voice shocked her into movement. She pulled the remaining darts out of the board and returned them to the man with a quick smile. 

“Good luck getting home, kid.”

Kim glanced back. She could just make out the slither of red hidden behind the mass of coloured felt. “Yeah. Thanks.”

* * *

Albuquerque was a lot like home, Kim found. Once you stripped away the local colour, swapped the cornfields for desert and all she was left with was nothing between her and the horizon. 

For the first time, however, it felt like she could reach out and touch it if she wanted.

Working herself half to death with a full time job as well as community college, she had scrapped enough money together to leave Nebraska. All she had to do now was work hard enough that she never had to look back.

She had spent countless hours at the local library, filling out application forms and at pay phones calling across states to ask about transferring her credits. Though she didn’t believe in fate, when she was accepted into UNM for her final year and everything about the move fell into place, it felt like the start of something.

Something more.

It was incredibly hard work, between moving, finishing college and then studying and passing the LSAT. Even all of that was just the beginning. Being indebted to anyone made Kim’s insides itch so despite being assured she had earned her place in law school, she was often the first one in the mailroom in the morning and the last one to leave on the nights she didn’t have class.

Some days she would look around the lecture hall at her classmates, noting how young they all seemed even though they were only a couple of years her junior, and thought about what they had done to be in this room. She overheard snippets of conversation about calling home and asking for money, about being bought a car for graduation. About their parents visiting them.

Kim hadn’t spoken to her mom since the night she packed her case and slept at the bus stop to get away from the taunts.

_ “You’ll be back soon enough! It won’t be like those shitty movies!” _

The thing was, law  _ was  _ like those shitty movies she loved. Black and white. Right and wrong. Checks and balances.

It wasn’t quite as passionate as Atticus Finch’s dignified speeches but in between the endless lines of text was the safety blanket she had never truly known. If she knew the right words to say and when to say them, then she could make everything equal. If she worked hard enough, she could make it right.

“ _Section 2 of the FAA declares that arbitration provisions will be subject to invalidation-_ ” her roommate read over her shoulder one night. “How the hell do you follow this? Just reading the title bores the shit out of me.”

Kim didn’t look up from her work. “I love it.”

* * *

It was about five months into their relationship that Kim answered the door to her boyfriend in a Royals shirt.

He pointed at it with a smirk. “What is that?”

Kim raised her chin in defiance. “Say a word against them and I will eat the entire pizza myself.”

Wisely, he understood she was being serious and raised his hands in defeat as he stepped into her apartment. Once he’d removed his coat he joined her on the couch and made a show of slowly selecting a slice of pizza as though she would attack him at any minute.

She shoved him and took the slice he had been eyeing up.

Things with Chris were fine. He was fun and understood how limited her free time was as he was in his final year of law school himself. Even though Kim was only just starting, between that and HHM, she barely had a free evening every two weeks. Most of the time they spent together was in UNM’s law library, studying together in silence.

It was the best relationship Kim had ever had.

“I didn’t realise you were from Kansas,” Chris said as she set the movie up.

She didn’t turn around when she replied. “I’m not.”

“Missouri, then.”

“Why the sudden interest?” Kim chuckled, pressing play on the machine. The remote hadn’t worked since she bought the thing.

“I’m just...” Chris scoffed. “Where are you from?”

Kim stood up, turning to face him. For some reason, having her back to him didn’t feel comfortable. “Some shithole in the Midwest you’ve never heard of.”

“Yeah but… where?” Chris was laughing but stopped when she didn’t respond. 

Behind her, the MGM lion roared. Kim shook her head. “Why does it matter?”

It took a few seconds of Chris opening and closing his mouth noiselessly for him to form a response. “Because you’re my girlfriend?”

“And I live in New Mexico.”

Chris took a swig of his beer, eyeing her critically. “You know where I’m from.”

She shrugged. “You told me. I didn’t ask.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“What kind of question is that? You had already told me so why would I need to ask?”

Refusing to be intimidated in her own home, Kim went back to the couch and grabbed her pizza. All out avoidance had served well as a tactic to not discuss her past before. She tried to settle against Chris but he pulled away.

“Do you… are we not serious to you? Because I - I love you, Kim, and you-”

Kim couldn’t help snorting with laughter but stopped when she saw the thunderous look on Chris’ face. “You can’t be serious.”

“I fucking am!”

They stared at each other for a horrible moment in which Kim wished she could turn the TV off. She hadn’t seen _A Fish Called Wanda_ before and really wanted to pay attention if she was being honest. Instead she asked the only question she wanted the answer to.

“Why?”

“What do you mean _why?_ ”

_ Because that way I can work out your angle here. _

“You hardly know me,” she said and the moment she had spoken she knew she was going to end the night single but it didn’t matter. 

Things with Chris had been fine. He was fun and understanding, but now he felt like a stranger in her home. The four walls she had built around herself, her sanctuary in the desert, had been penetrated, and it wasn’t stable anymore. She had offered enough of herself so that they could enjoy each other’s company but now he was demanding more.

Kim had buried the rest so deeply she wasn’t sure there was any more of her left to give.

* * *

Making out with Jimmy in the parking lot of a bar was a terrible idea.

Truly, spectacularly terrible.

Half of the HHM staff were still inside, celebrating the holidays but could leave and see them, pressed together against a wall, at any minute. 

Getting a cab back to Jimmy’s apartment was an even worse idea.

Infinitely worse.

She watched him half fall, giggling, into the back seat beside her and drunkenly thought “fuck it” as she sealed her lips to his.

Everything else with Jimmy was so easy so why couldn’t this be?

In the bright light of the morning the reasons came back to her. She woke nearly a half hour before him and spent it delicately brushing his hair out of his eyes and smiling when it fell stubbornly across his face again.

Sleeping with him complicated a friendship she had come to rely on. There was never any pressure or pretense with Jimmy. Just a quiet acceptance and understanding. Somehow being around him was like being on her own but with someone to talk to if she wanted to.

It sounded ridiculous, but Kim wondered if this is what friendship had been all along and she had just never found it before.

So she formulated her argument.

Neither of them had time for a relationship. She was gearing up for the final stretch of law school and he was scraping together enough credits to finish college and they were both still working full time. In less than a year she would be taking her place upstairs at HHM and it wouldn’t be ethical to date an underling. Sleeping with her boss’ brother was guaranteed to reflect badly on her. 

Then there was how he was twice divorced burnout, trying to get his life started fifteen years late and seven years older than her to boot.

Jimmy’s eyes blinked open and he scrunched them up again against the light.

At no point did she consider that it wouldn’t work between them.

Gradually, Jimmy fought against the hangover fog and squinted across the pillow at her. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.” His voice was more gravelly than normal and Kim’s resolve shook.

“Jim-”

“Can we just… Let me get some pants on before you explain how even the best sex of your life isn’t going to stand between you and law school?”

And that was the thing with Jimmy. As much as they skated around their pasts, only returning the crumbs they received in kind, they _knew_ each other. They didn’t need histories or even words half the time. Bizarrely, that was what made Kim more likely to talk to him than anyone else she had ever met.

“The best might have.” 

“Aww what? Tell me I at least exceeded expectations?”

Kim shrugged. “Never really thought about it.”

“You’re a shitty liar, Wexler.”   
  


“No, I’m not.”

They glared at each other for a moment before Jimmy caved.

“Okay, you’re not but I still know you’ve thought about it,” he accused her, shuffling onto his side.

“Not nearly as much as you. How did I match up?”

Jimmy considered for a couple of seconds. “Oh, huge disappointment.”

“Wow,” Kim scoffed. She pulled her pillow from under her head to slam it into his face. As he spluttered indignantly, she got up and started rounding her clothes up. She didn’t remember how her shirt ended up under the kitchen table but the memory was sure to come back to her when she wasn’t so dehydrated.

It would have been easier to raid Jimmy’s drawers for clean clothes that didn’t smell like last night’s cigarettes but it would send out the wrong message.

She came back through the archway, now dressed in jeans and bra, to see Jimmy, still presumably naked and leaning against his headboard. “I have a vivid imagination and no social life. The things you’ve done to me in my head? Filth. You should be ashamed,” he added, pointing at her. “I can’t look you in the eye some mornings.”

“Huh. I almost want to sleep with fantasy me.”

“That’s like… number two all time scenario.”

Kim arched an eyebrow at him. “Can’t wait to hear number one.”

She untangled her shirt and pulled it over her head. When she looked over at Jimmy again, he was staring at her, clearly unsure whether to reply sincerely or not. Kim waited, willing him to keep joking, to keep everything neither of them could say left in the spaces between the words that they could.

“Well… It involves a Nancy Reagan outfit. I won’t tell you which one of us is wearing it.”

Kim snorted with laughter. Her nerves made it hard for her to stop. Eventually she sat back on the bed, legs crossed, facing Jimmy. He sat up and took her hand. She let him play with her fingers.

“So,” he said, his voice so low she swore she could feel it vibrate through where their skin touched, “guess this is a one night only kinda deal?”

It took all of her strength to look him in the eye but she owed him that. “I think so. Yeah.”

They sat like that for a few minutes in a comfortable silence, him barely covered and her fully dressed, both ignoring how the sheets still smelt like them. In her mind, Kim could almost hear them, just a couple of hours ago, fumbling and laughing, being completely open with one another.

Since she had woken up there was only one thing she had really been honest about; she really was a fantastic liar. It might have been how drunk she was or because she hadn’t gotten laid in a while or just because it was Jimmy and whatever that meant, but she didn’t think she had come that hard before in her life.

“An argument could be made for a small extension though.”

His face lit up in a way that made him look like a puppy and it was like a fire was sparking up in Kim’s chest. “Yeah?”

“Depends how good the pancakes you’re about to make me are.”

“If they were more like leftover pizza how would that affect my chances?” Jimmy hedged.

“Vastly improve them.”

“Then, Miss Wexler almost esquire, prepare yourself for part two of the McGill experience!” He pulled the covers back with flair and jumped out of the bed with all the grace a hungover, half asleep guy in his thirties could manage.

The sheet landed partially over Kim’s face and she made no attempt to move it, allowing it to hide her grin.

* * *

The sound of Moon River swelled into Jimmy’s soulless corporate living room from his TV. Kim snuggled deeper into his side, feeling more at home with the generic decorations than places she had personally lived. Without a personality being shoved into her face, she felt like she could relax in the weird void it created. There was no one else she needed to be, no one there she needed to impress.

There was just Jimmy.

“What’s with old movie kisses?”

“I don’t know.” Kim propped her chin on his shoulder to watch him chew over his words. “What _is_ with old movie kisses?”

“You know.” He gestured at the screen. “They just kinda mash their mouths together and… sway.”

“It’s tasteful.”

“It’s sad.”

“It’s sup- hmph!”

Jimmy pressed his mouth against hers and wasn’t moving. Both of them had their eyes open and Kim felt hers crossing. She couldn’t help but giggle against his mouth.

“This doing it for ya?” he mumbled.

She shoved him away. “Maybe if you were George Peppard.”

“I’m totally hotter than George Peppard.”

“Sure.” She kissed him and started hunting for the remote amongst the cushions.

“And what’s with them all confessing their love for each other in the rain? Why would you stand out there, soaking wet, ruining your slicked back ‘do, just to have an important conversation?”

“Hmm.” Kim wondered how anyone could leave themselves so open regardless of the weather. She turned the movie off and reached for her beer. “Like it changes anything anyway. She’s still a prostitute with a racist caricature for a neighbour.”

Jimmy shrugged. “Eh. It makes them happy”

“It’s just words.” Kim finished her beer and stood up, stretching. It had been a long day at work and that plus the drive to Jimmy’s place had left her exhausted. The prospect of having to get up earlier than normal in the morning was horrible but she doubted she could drive home right now. She counted her blessings that she had started keeping a change of work clothes at Jimmy’s so at least she didn’t have to go home before work in the morning.

It wasn’t until she held her hand out to take Jimmy’s empty bottle that she realised he was looking at her strangely. 

“Pretty big words,” he said gruffly, passing her his bottle. 

She frowned, not quite meeting his eye. “The whole sentence is three syllables.”

“I don’t think they’re counting syllables.”

Kim wouldn’t either. In her experience it was cause to count other things. The change in her purse, the seconds left on a call, the number of exits… Those three syllables were usually weaponised for manipulation, custom built to catch her off guard and tear her down. Other times they were just empty filler for someone who wasn’t quite sure what else they should say.

She wasn’t sure which one she hated more.

Unable to look at Jimmy’s conflicted expression much longer, Kim collected the empty bowl they had put popcorn in and took it into the kitchen. She put the bottles in the trash and the bowl into the fancy dishwasher (which she had already mocked Jimmy for having) and took a deep breath. Finally starting something real with Jimmy was long overdue. She had realised it almost immediately. As soon as he had passed the bar and they were both free of the academic hell of law school they should have cut all the shit and gone for it.

The only problem was, rather than waiting a few months for the person she was in a relationship with to realise they were dating a cold shell of a person, it was only going to take a couple of weeks.

_ Stop that, _she chided herself. _You’re just… pragmatic. _

Except, with Jimmy, she wasn’t.

If he said those three syllables, he would mean them and it wouldn’t be baseless. He _did_ know her. He knew her better than anyone ever had.

And she knew him. And she wanted him. And she-

Didn’t she?

A soft shuffling noise behind her alerted Kim to Jimmy’s presence but she kept her back to him. He’d be able to read the panic on her face and she didn’t want to worry him.

“Did I er-” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No.”

Internally, she dared him to say it, just to see how she would react to it. 

“Okay.”

She looked over her shoulder and he flashed her a smile. 

In that nameless apartment, Kim finally understood what being loved was meant to be. It wasn’t demanding or insidious or easy or battle.

It was Jimmy McGill, standing awkwardly in his kitchen, not asking anything from her except, well… her.

And if later, when they were tangled together under his sheets in the dark, she cried a little and he pretended not to notice, then wasn’t it only fair she got to pretend it never happened either?

* * *

Jimmy’s sunburn looked even harsher against the pure white sheets of the hotel bed. 

Kim took a moment to watch him make himself comfortable before turning the bathroom light off and sliding in beside him. She curled around him as best she could without hurting his shoulders. He didn’t seem to mind but she had caught him wincing a couple of times during sex earlier. It was obvious he was still in pain but putting on a brave face.

“ _...put a gun to my head... _ ”

Her fingers looked so pale in comparison to his skin.

“Where did you get bowling balls from?”

“Heh. Antique store. You know that weird place with the-”

“The creepy dolls?”

“In the window. Yeah.”

“Brave.”

“I suffer for my art.”

Kim kissed his shoulder, his skin rougher than normal. It felt wrong. Everything else was soft in their oasis. She’d hoped against reason they could stay here until she could smooth his worries and pains out, fill in the cracks they had left, and make him whole. Use parts of herself to make up the difference if she had to.

Everything was different now. That level of attachment - of dependence - wasn’t as horrifying as it had been. For every fragment of herself she gave up, she got back with interest. They held each other up, picking up any slack and sharing their burdens, only tearing each other apart when they pulled away from the whole. 

She had always worried it would feel like drowning, but when Jimmy tried to push her back to the safety of the shallows, she knew she had to hold on. While he had been lost in the desert she had got a taste of a world without Jimmy McGill and while she could have survived, it wouldn’t have been living. Together was the only way she wanted to get through this storm.

Solo practitioners together. They could out run and out think anything the world threw at them.

“I should have told you about the offer.”

“Hmm?”

“The job offer,” Jimmy clarified. He bit his lip. “I know it was before our deal but-”

“Wedding.”

Kim felt Jimmy’s breath catch in his chest.

“What?”

“Before the wedding. Before we got married.”

“I know. It’s just…”

It would have been easy to give him an out but this was the second time she had corrected him that evening. He wasn’t usually slow on the uptake so she rested her chin on her hand to watch him string it all together. 

For some reason though, he was determined to remain obtuse.

“It’s just a - a legal thing-”

“Is it?” Kim kept her face straight. It wasn’t difficult. All she felt was calm while underneath her hand she could feel Jimmy’s pulse speeding up.

It took him an age to reply and when he did she could barely hear it despite being pressed against him.

“No.”

“Then why talk about it like it is?” she asked, finding her voice dropping to the same volume.

They stared at each other while Kim ran a finger over his clavicle. His face was always expressive and this time was no exception. She watched as he ran through denial, humour, shock and, finally, disbelieving acceptance. 

“Kim-” He tried to sit up but she gently held him down.

“I know,” she assured him. “I know that you love me. You know-” At the vital moment, Kim’s voice died and she swallowed around the lump of her failure. She gestured between them in an aborted attempt to make up for it but it felt inadequate even to her.

She closed her eyes to regroup and felt Jimmy’s rough palm against her cheek. When she opened them again he was giving her the tiny half smile she would stand up to a hundred evil men to see every day.

It left her with no choice but to grin back at him. “We got married.”

“Yeah. It’s just you said -”

“I know. It wasn’t just…” She chewed on her bottom lip. “It meant something to me, Jimmy.”

“It meant everything to me.”

She snorted. “Smooth.” 

“I thought so.”

Though they were both grinning, Kim packed the moment away in her memory, wrapped in tissue, like it was delicate and precious. They had always found the sincerest of dreams hidden behind jokes. Plans for the future were made in jest but included the other just to reassure them that they were included. After the week they had had, the padding was superfluous.

He walked through hell to come back to her and she had faced the devil to keep him safe.

So when she kissed him, she let any lingering doubts and old hurts fall away. She pulled the covers over their heads, shielding them from echoes of Howard and Kevin’s disapproval, from Chuck’s judgemental ghost, from the fear that had chased them away from their home and the masks they hid behind when they left the sanctuary of each other. 

This was the life she wanted. This was the man she had chosen to spend it with. 

“I love you,” she told him as easily as she drew breath.

This was the bed she had made.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
